Foraging success influences foraging motivation in ants

Solitary foraging ants learn foraging routes, and can recall them throughout their foraging life, especially if routes are rewarding. Despite their navigational prowess, previous studies have reported that unsuccessful foraging trips are also part of their foraging life. Surprisingly little is known about whether and how unsuccessful foraging trips affect the subsequent foraging behavior in ants. Here we trained Cataglyphis velox ants in their natural habitat on a route with a rewarding feeder at the end. Foragers that visited the feeder frequently, were tested by subjecting them to an unsuccessful foraging trip with no food provided. The subsequent foraging latency - the time foragers remained inside the nest until starting a new foraging trip - was analyzed. For most of the tested ants, one single unsuccessful foraging trip increased their foraging latency to a 25-time manifold. This shows that foraging motivation in ants is highly dependent on the success of foraging trips.